In November I delivered an address on “The Ecological Debt” to the annual GreenAccord conference for environmental journalists in Naples, Italy. One of the attendees subsequently wrote me for more detail on some of the issues this talk raised about climate change. Here are my responses to her questions:

1) As an academic and an ecologist, what do you expect from this latest round of talks? [The COP19 Climate Change Meetings in Warsaw]

As an academic (human) ecologist, I expect nothing concrete from this meeting. (By ‘concrete’, I mean a binding plan which would require, for example, wealthy countries to begin carbon emissions reductions at the rate of 6%-10% per year, as necessary to avoid catastrophic warming.) Despite the best efforts of committed individuals and those nations suffering the brunt of climate change impacts, the COP sessions do not deal seriously with either the social justice or ecological implications of climate change. Vested interests ensure that they really emphasize short-term economics and politics and thus grossly discount the increasing probability of truly horrendous future costs. In effect, the meetings are really about ways to maintain (un)economic growth in the face of contrary evidence and finding ways to delay the hard decisions until the next round of talks. Continue reading Climate change: The Universities’ and Canada’s roles→

William E. Rees is an internationally recognized academic, author, speaker, and co-creator of the ecofootprint concept.